The GENES Blog (GEnealogy News and EventS): Top stories concerning ancestral research in Britain, Ireland, and their diasporas, from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit The GENES Blog if you do so. To contact me please email chrismpaton @ outlook.com.

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Wednesday, 28 March 2012

1915 Scottish Valuation Roll to go online

The 1915 valuation roll will be released at the ScotlandsPeople Centre (www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk) and on the online ScotlandsPeople website (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk) later today (Wednesday 28th March). The valuation rolls were recorded annually from 1855 onwards up to 1989, and were used as the basis for taxation. Full details can be found on these at www.nas.gov.uk/guides/valuationRolls.asp. In due course ScotlandsPeople will be making available online the rolls from 1855, 1865, 1875, 1885, 1895, 1905 but will be starting today with the records from 1915 - in other words, the mid-census years. Typical information in the records includes the description and situation of each property, and the proprietor, tenant and occupier (though not the whole household). My understanding is that each record image will cost just 2 credits to view (less than 47pence).

At the Edinburgh based centre, this will be the first set of records that will allow customers to search for a place without inserting a name, so should be a useful tool for finding people. Also at the centre limited help text will be available on the search page and can be viewed by hovering the cursor over the question mark associated with the search field. The main bulk of the help text has not yet been uploaded to the centre website, however, help text will be available at the online site at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk.

I will post further information on this once I've had a chance to play with the online version!

2 comments:

Well done for breaking the story first, Newshound Paton! I'm particularly looking forward to the earlier ones, as all branches of my family had found their way to Glasgow by then and the 1913-14 VR for Glasgow is online at The Glasgow Story http://www.theglasgowstory.com/valindex.php There are lots of limitations to using that site, but it is free, and comes with some terrific maps.

The maps are very good! Some other records are also available, for Dumfriesshire at http://www.maxwellancestry.com/ancestry/resources/dumfriesshirevaluationroll.htm (1896-97), whilst Ancestry has some for Perthshire up to 1899, as well as earlier cess and stent rolls - see http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1948

The records are in fact all digitised from 1855-1915 at the NRS, but can also now be accessed on a stand alone terminal or two in the ScotlandsPeople Centre. Indexed only for the mid census years (ending in a 5!), but rest in between can be browsed.